Relationship-based teaching: a relational ethics led approach to teaching social work

Abstract

Following a discourse in social work education in England about the need for social workers to develop effective relationships with service users and professionals, I made a relational ethical decision to teach social work students from a relationship-based approach. It was relationally ethical as my teaching would match the approach students were intended to practice from. The relationship-based model requires mutual engagement, mutual empathy and mutual empowerment within the student/teacher relationship (Edwards and Richards 2002). Mutuality implies reciprocity, yet it was not a decision agreed with the students to be taught from this approach, therefore is it ethical to expect a mutual response to an approach they have not made an informed decision to be taught from? I aim to explore the ethics of my decision to create mutuality with students who have not formally agreed to be taught from a model which requires them to give of themselves.

Keywords:

• Mutuality
• relational ethics
• relationship-based teaching
• social work education
• social work practice

Acknowledgements

Thanks are extended to Dr Gail Simon for her comments during the writing of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Sharon Walker is a senior lecturer in social work and has been a qualified social worker since 1992. She has worked in a range of settings including children's social care and the criminal justice system. She has written psycho-social programs for substance using offenders in the UK and Bulgaria and has an interest in knowledge exchange and impact. She is completing a professional doctorate in systemic practice at University of Bedfordshire, exploring relationship-based approaches to teaching social work students.